Giving Feedback

How to give feedback

Entire books are written on giving effective feedback and for a good reason. Being able to deliver effective constructive criticism is a surefire way of making your staff improve and seek your counsel as a leader. What’s even better is that they’ll begin to do it to you, which will help you improve in turn.

The best and most concise advice on how to deliver feedback is the concept of radical candor, from the bookKim Scott. Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. St. Martin’s Press, New York, NY, 2017. of the same name. It outlines what to do and what not to do when talking to your staff. Learning the concept is simple, but mastering it requires practice.

When delivering feedback, you need to ensure that you:

• Care personally about the individual that you’re talking to you. This ensures that you communicate with them because it’s in their best interests and you want to see them improve.
• Challenge directly to ensure you say exactly what you think. Get to the point, and if you think that something isn’t good enough, say it.

These two traits of sincerity and specificity ensure that you strengthen your relationship with your staff and push them toward growth. However, what happens when you only do one and not the other, or don’t do either of them at all? Take a look at the quadrant in the figure below: